Saturday, 5 March 2011

RCS Surgical Workforce Report 2010

The survey was sent to all consultant surgeons on the RCS(Eng) database. They had a 60% response, which is not bad for a survey, but is far from definitive.

According to their records there are 334 consultant plastic surgeons in the UK. Plastic surgery does well on the number of female surgeons (44, 13.1%) compared to other specialties. It comes second highest after paediatric surgery but still disappointingly low.

The 334 consultants hold NHS appointments but there are many more plastics surgeons out there. My Freedom of Information request to the GMC showed that there are currently over 700 surgeons on the GMC specialty register with plastic surgery as their primary qualification.